FiFo.sh Calendar

Day: April 22, 2007

This week is also the 2007 edition of the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival. It’s moved location compared to last year, now landed at the City theather in Amsterdam, which seems like a much better location. Saturday I wanted to watch ‘XxxHolic‘ and ‘The Place Promised In Our Early Days‘, but I couldn’t make it back to Amsterdam in time, so I only got to see ‘The Place…’. The movie had quite a low tempo and was quite difficult to follow, lacking some explanations on situations and with subtitles sometimes already moving on when I wasn’t even halfway reading them. All in all I wouln’t recommend the movie, there seems to be much better anime around, but maybe I should watch a fansub or dvd version before really passing judgement, I was quite tired at the time, the movie’s tempo not helping me staying alert and awake.

Sunday I watched two more Anime movies…
“The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” is a light, funny tragic-comedy story about a girl who discovers she can ‘jump through time’. The movie moves back and forward through a period of a few days, every time making slight alterations in the reality and events following. I thought it was one of the best movies I’ve seen this festival.
Paprika was a bit more difficult to follow, telling the story of a group of people who have developped a dream-monitoring device, which allows them to look into, and act in dreams of their patients. The device gets stolen however, and the ‘terrorists’ are apparently using it to cause havoc in the city, driving people insane or to their deaths. It’s the job of Paprika, the alter-ego / dream-persona of the main character to investigate the matter and bring it to a close. At times it can be quite hard to follow, always switching from one dream-world to the next, never knowing if you’re still watching the dream-world or the ‘real’ world.

Both movies were very nicely done both visually and audio-wise and were both highly rated at this point in the festival

Saturday night I visited my first OpenForge meeting in Rotterdam where I had some nice talks with some interesting people and played a few games of Poker, Wii-Bowling and Hartenjagen till the early morning. Whizzman, Juerd, MadEddie, Mayo, Marco and Pitr were among those present. The bbq was also really nice (great weather) and I’m sure I have to do this again some day. Thanks to the sponsors of OpenForge, keep it up.
P.S. Mayo’s pokerskills are evil…. again she played the table like a pro and won against all odds 😉

Friday after work I went to Liessa’s ‘kwart-eeuw’ party (her 25th birthday) in Cafe het Leeuwtje in Amsterdam. A lot of people came along and we really filled the entire bar, driving most regulars off. It was nice to meet some people again who I hadn’t seen in a while or only spoke online. Habbie and Liessa sponsored a keg of Grimbergen Dubbel, which is a really nice, but rather heavy beer. Luckily I could spend the night at Faragon’s, so I could actually drink more then 2 of em ;). Rainman made some really nice pictures of the party also viewable on this Flickr set. I also made some short video’s with my camphone of the goings-on, which I’ll link below as soon as I have time to get em off my phone 🙂